The Proviso (75 page)

A faint sadness underpinned Sebastian’s
matter-of-factness.

“What happened to him?” she asked softly, although
she had a pretty good idea and Sebastian’s next words confirmed
it.

“Losing that trial. He was fresh out of law school,
naïve and he had to study things—photos, autopsy reports, you
know—that no human should ever have to know exist. It did something
to him— I don’t know how to put it. It raped his personality. His
joie de vivre
was gone. He was never the same after that and
he . . . lost it. Totally spiraled out of control. He’s a
completely different person now.”

“I remember the news then,” Eilis said softly. She
would never forget the publicity that surrounded him at the time.
“That’s when I found out I had a brother. After that, I always paid
attention if I heard his name.” She had never wanted to believe—
Yet she was glad that— “Knox didn’t really . . . ?”

Sebastian raised his eyebrow at her. “Sometimes
what’s moral and just is very, very ugly.”

“Did your church teach you that?”

“Shit, no. It’s one big reason why I left.”

She hesitated. “So . . . David—?”

“Eilis, we do what we think is right. No, I haven’t
done a lot of the things Knox and Giselle have done, but don’t
doubt for a minute I wouldn’t. I carry on the off chance Fen comes
after me, but I haven’t had to use a gun since I was a teenager and
I certainly haven’t been presented with the situations Knox and
Giselle have. We—the three of us—are a pack of fighters and we
believe in justice at all costs. Then we got Kenard, who’s just as
ruthless, with his own brand of justice.”

Sebastian studied her for a long moment until she
squirmed. Then he opened his mouth and said, very deliberately,

“And now we have you.”

Her eyes widened.

“I’ve never met anyone with an iron will like yours,
Eilis,” he said with reverence. “Very few people in the world could
build something like HRP, beating Fen back at every turn. You
stayed with a man who’d raped you so you could save your company
and the livelihoods and life savings of two hundred and fifty
people. You sold your paintings to keep those people employed. How
you handled Fen in New York was
magnificent
. If that’s a
glimpse of the ruthless bitch I’d heard about, then I’d sure like
to see more of her come out to play.”

Then she realized: Sebastian Taight—King
Midas—didn’t simply love her, desire her, want children with her;
he
respected
her as a businesswoman, a
fighter
. Eilis
thought she’d never catch a breath.

He stood then and held his large hand out. She put
hers in it and felt his fingers close around hers gently to pull
her up and out of the chair, then to the basement door. He led her
down to the studio where she’d found shame in her fantasy and for
betraying the real man. He flipped some switches so that they had
enough light to see their way to that decadent bedroom.

“Do you remember,” he murmured as he led her into
his other bedroom, and she began to feel desire course through her
when she understood that he was bringing her into Ford’s bed now
that she’d been in Sebastian’s, “at Christmas when I told you you’d
understand why I didn’t want to play my favorite music for you when
you heard it?”

“I remember.”

“Have you ever listened to it?”

“I didn’t remember the title.”

Sebastian held her hand as she climbed up the step
stool into the bed, then he closed the velvet and chiffon drapes
surrounding it before getting in the other side. She gasped as the
first chord rang out. Sebastian sat cross-legged on the bed, then
reached out for her.

Sebastian ran his hands through her long blonde hair
and he pulled her close so that she was lying on her belly, looking
up at him; she had never had to look up to look him in the eye.

He lowered his head, almost kissing her, but not
quite. He studied her and she studied him.

“Welcome to my other world, Eilis Logan,” he
whispered, his words arousing her to such a degree as she had never
imagined words—and so few!—could do, “my world of decadence and
hedonism and Bacchanalian pleasures. I’ll give you the best the
world has to offer in music, wine, food, literature, and the arts;
the finest silks, the deepest velvets, the smoothest cottons, the
roughest linens, the loveliest furs; the most splendid gardens, the
sweetest of flowers, the most fragrant of oils.

“Today, tonight, for the next few lifetimes, you’re
here in my studio, my bed, my world, a world where only fine things
live. I’ll teach you every wonderful thing about sex and love and
fucking that you never knew existed.” His whisper became a breath.
“But the finest, most decadent, most perfect thing in my world is
you.”

“Sebastian,” she whispered when finally he kissed
her.

* * * * *

67:
DULCISSIME

Eilis had been drugged and that drug was Sebastian
Taight.

He brought her chocolate and strawberries, exquisite
cheeses and breads and wines, grapes and oranges and tropical
fruits of every type—and fed them to her, caressed her body with
them, squeezed the juices into the most sensitive areas on her body
and licked it all up. Lazy. Slow. Hot.

He brought her champagne that she drank straight
from the bottle, then shared with him in a kiss. He poured it over
her belly and sipped from her navel.

He brought her absinthe and they shared it in
glasses that were a hundred years old. He taught her how to pour
ice water over the sugar cube cradled in absinthe spoons that were
at least as old as the glasses.

He brought her mint chocolate chip ice cream and he
drizzled it at the apex of her thighs, in her “nooks and crannies,”
then leisurely licked it off, all the while whispering to her that
mint chocolate chip ice cream
was
her name, and he said her
name over and over again, reverently, like a whisper on a
breeze.

He read to her from the Song of Solomon, the
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
, Ovid,
The Canterbury Tales
,
The Decameron,
Fanny Hill
,
Lady Chatterly’s Lover
,
Delta of Venus
, Sextus Propertius.

He whispered to her in French when he made love to
her.

He played for her all the operas of Puccini and
Rossini, and
Don Giovanni
and
Faust
and
Carmen
; he played for her Rachmaninoff, deBussy, Smetana,
and Orff. He played for her Gershwin and murmured in her ear of the
things he had done and seen as an American in Paris. He made love
to her to Delibes, “The Flower Duet” and again to Albinoni, “Adagio
in G minor” and again to Liszt, “Sospiro.”

He brought her exquisite, delicate oils of jasmine
and orange blossom that he rubbed into her skin, every square
millimeter, every pore, and where he oiled, he kissed.

He brought her a blindfold and, while she was
blinded, he drank from her the nectar of the gods.

He slid strawberries up inside her, then ate them
before sliding in himself and loving her.

There was only one thing Eilis could do for him that
he had never had a good experience with, and she was shocked when
he told her.

“I spent my life learning how to give,” he murmured
to her once she’d swallowed everything he gave her and rose above
him to then settle beside him, lying half atop him, her legs
entwining with his. “I was under the impression that wasn’t
something women wanted to do, so I didn’t ask and the only
volunteers didn’t make it worth my while. I didn’t figure I was
missing anything. Silly me.”

She didn’t know how long she’d been with him in that
dimly lit bed of velvet and silk, cotton and chiffon, in the corner
of an equally dim alcove. There were no windows, no sense of day or
night, no clocks, no sound except the music and the ventilation
system, and absent that, the gasps and cries of their own
passion.

They made love and slept in the bed whenever they
felt like it; they took meals and drank the absinthe in that
hedonistic red and gold salon she now realized was rife with sexual
imagery; they showered in that sparkling white bathroom that had
its own stark sensuality. It seemed Sebastian had an endless supply
of clean sheets.

The fourth time they’d changed the linens, he said,
“I like to eat in bed, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

She’d laughed in sheer delight.

Time had stopped.

Sebastian slept very little, she noticed, and
certainly not on any pattern she could discern.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked when she
awoke slowly to find that he was, again, awake.

“I’m thinking about the present I got you at
Christmas.”

Her brow wrinkled. “Why didn’t you give it to me at
Christmas, then?”

“Look,” he whispered as he pulled a pair of black
French silk stockings out of a small box she hadn’t seen. Her eyes
grew wide and her juices began to flow, hot and thick, like lava.
“And this,” he said as he let a black silk garter belt dangle from
his fingers. “And these.” The highest pair of fine silk sling-back
heels she had ever seen. “Go sit in that chair. I want to watch you
put them on.”

She put the garter belt on as she sashayed across
the room to the deep chair, looking over her shoulder at Sebastian,
who had the look and tension of a hungry wolf about him.

She sat facing him and rolled the stocking over her
thumbs, then raised her leg. She slid the first one over her skin
slow, languid, because she had nothing to be shy about now. She
carefully rolled the next stocking up her leg, fastening it slowly,
carefully to the garter belt. Once she’d finished rolling both
stockings over her legs, she leaned back and spread her knees so
that he could see everything between her thighs.

He sucked in a long, shuddering breath.

Lifting her leg high again, she put one shoe on,
then repeated the process for the other foot. Then, standing, she
modeled her new clothes, coming close enough for him to barely
touch, then prancing out of reach once again. Sebastian sighed. He
sat on the edge of the bed, then, his legs splayed out. He lay back
until his torso was supported by one elbow. He grasped his hard
cock in his hand and he slowly stroked himself while he watched her
strut around in front of him with an intensity that made her even
wetter.

So she sat and threw one knee over the arm of the
chair, then the other knee over the other arm. She put a hand
between her legs. Sebastian sucked in a deep breath, his eyes
wide.

Eilis felt her own hand do to herself what she had
done a thousand times before, what Sebastian had done to her almost
that many times. She watched as his hand moved faster and faster,
but Eilis decided she needed to be filled. She abruptly got up from
the chair, pushed Sebastian roughly onto his back, straddled him,
and slid down his cock, making them both groan in ecstasy.

And she fucked him, her legs strengthened by years
of gardening and who-knew-how-many days of unrelenting sex. She
felt every rub of every fine rib of her silk stockings between her
skin and his. She didn’t go to bed without them on again.

Sebastian painted her as he would have painted her
to begin with. Languid and dissolute from his lavish debauchery,
she called up her own sexuality over and over again while he
painted her.

“That,” he murmured to her when he’d finished, “is
not getting hung anywhere but our bedroom.”

Our
bedroom?

“Is that our bedroom?” she asked, pointing to the
Den of Iniquity as he drew her up, twirled her around, and walked
her backward.

“Do you want it to be?”

“We’re both rich,” she murmured as he slammed her up
against the studio wall. “We’d never have to work again.”

“Ah,” he said as he stroked slowly in and out, her
legs wrapped around his hips, “but I need the numbers and the game
as much as I need the art; I won’t stay sane without both. And you,
who’ve had to work and scrabble for everything you’ve built, would
become very, very unhappy with this life soon enough and gardening
alone wouldn’t fulfill you. Work without pleasure means nothing.
Life without work means even less.”

“I’m bored with HRP,” she told him breathlessly,
tightening her legs to encourage a faster pace. “I want to do
something different now.”

He obliged her, pounding into her until she came
almost violently. “I’ve never been able to fuck a woman while
talking business. I’ll never look at money the same way again.”

Some time after they had changed the sheets (again),
showered, and slept, Sebastian took her to the magenta chaise and,
his chest to her back, pressed her body forward until her hands
found the carved wood on the back of the couch.

Eilis felt him slide slow, easy, inside her and she
dropped her head down panting, bracing her body, preparing for the
hard thrusts that she wanted but that didn’t come. His big hands
wrapped around her, but his hips barely moved as he stroked her,
long, slow strokes she could feel against her pubic bone.

She had no idea what he was doing to her; this
wasn’t like anything she’d experienced before. She loved this, she
couldn’t deny it, but it was foreign—the sensations were different.
It felt richer, deeper in its subtle and never-ending buildup. He
slid one hand down and around to her clitoris, but instead of
manipulating it, his hand cupped the whole of her mons and pressed
her firmly back toward him and then she understood.

Eilis came as slow and easy as he was stroking her,
filling her, sandwiching her pubic bone between his cock and his
hand. She raised her head and breathed deeply, pulling all the air
into her lungs that she could, which only deepened this burgeoning
. . . thing . . . that she never knew existed.